Essay on The Return of Martin Guerre

Family is not an important thing. It’s everything. In the whole world, there are many different types of family. The broken ones, the chaotic ones, the ordinary ones and the extraordinary ones. In the novel Walk Two Moons, written by Sharon Creech, there are some families, and all of them are unique. There is Salamanca’s family, which used to live in Bybanks, Kentucky. Salamanca is the main character of the book, she went on a trip with her grandparents, it was the same her mother did before dying. Salamanca was an immature girl in the beginning of the novel, but throughout, she changed a lot. Her mother went on her own journey, and now Sal and her father lived alone. They decided to move to Euclid, Ohio, a big city with no nature around. Unfortunately, she has a broken family. On the other side, Ben, who was Sal’s classmate and boyfriend by the end of the novel, was considered the strange family. His mother was sick and needed to be in

Starting with the premodern society and moving on to our modern society I will compare and contrast the two societies.

Additionally, the book explores detailed information regarding the shift of many people at the time from Catholicism to Protestantism, which is extremely important to the development of what is occurring. Form Davis’s prospective, Bertrande really knows the truth that imposter (fake Martin) is not her true husband, but for some reasons she conceals the truth. Perhaps, she has needs needed to be stratified by one means or another since the religious system of church regarded her as an abandoned wife rather than widow because there was no evidence that proofs the husband’s death. Thus, marriage laws prevent Bertrande from receiving a divorce so that she couldn’t marry again. She was under unknown destiny because she was in between wife title

Imagine a world where people were forced to work the land for very little food and had to pay high taxes. This is what life was like for the peasants, or serfs, in Europe during the Middle Ages. From 500 to 1500 AD, life in Europe was organized into a categorized system. The Middle Ages lasted from 476 CE to the 14th Century(OI)

The 16th century was a time of creativity, discovery, exploration, and invention. The Cheese and the Worms, written by Carlo Ginzburg, tells the story of Domenico Scandella. The book explores Scandella’s, otherwise known as Menocchio, world-view at the time. Menocchio was a miller who was tried for his unorthodox religious views and eventually burnt at the stake for heresy in 1599. During this time, Menocchio was seen as special as he was a peasant who could read, a peasant who had an education. Ginsburg’s display of Menocchio’s views gives the reader an insight into peasant culture. The peasant culture experienced many grievances as they suffered in their daily lives with little opportunity for survival. Their only opportunity of survival was working for landlords on the land. Peasants had little to no money and it did not help that they were being controlled by the church. The people were unaware that history was occurring but the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, the Inquisition, and other historical moments during the time were all relevant to the typical European peasant Menocchio as most of his ideas were caught in the currents of the 16th century.

Natalie Zemon Davis’ famous work The Return of Martin Guerre is a story of a man who runs away from his family and home, an imposter comes and takes over his life, and returns only when the imposter is about to be found innocent in trial. Davis’ story has the new Martin Guerre and his new wife Bertrande, work together to invent a marriage between them. The story is about identity, culture and love in 16th century peasant society.

The narrative of Davis’s monograph and Vigne’s movie has similarities and differences as well. For example, the return of Martin Guerre after eight years to the court in the neck of time is basically the same in both works, but the starting point is different in terms of time and place. The book starts with a detailed background of Martin’s family, their journey from the Basque region to Artigat, and how they adopt the life of the new place by changing their names, changing their customs, and learning the language so that they become like the villagers. On the other hand, the film begins with villages of Artigat and soon with the marriage of Martin and Bertrande in order to capture audience’s attention to be engaged in watching the film. However, the movie’s director ignores all the background of the Martin’s family.

In the 17th century, as well as centuries before and after, the role of women was to serve their husband and fill his desires: bearing a child, meeting his sexual desires, keeping a clean household, and serving her family food. She was not to be seen as an equal to her husband or any other man, and rarely ever talked to her husband about matters involving business, religion, or important decisions (“Salem Witch Trials History Channel.” YouTube). The same concept applied to children during this time, with the idea of “children should be seen and not heard.” When the two qualities are put together, a female child, you can only imagine how inferior they felt and how insignificantly they were treated by surrounding men in the community. With this in mind, as well as considering

The third account of crisis is found in Natalie Zemon-Davis’ story entitled “The Return of Martin Guerre”. As the title states, this work centers around Martin Guerre, though the primary players include his wife Bertrande and Arnaud du Tilh, Martins’ imposter. With the sudden disappearance of Martin,

Natalie Zemon-Davis’s 1983 book The Return of Martin Guerre provided both the public and academic world with a fresh and interesting take on a classic story. Presented like a mystery thriller, Davis weaves a tale of deception based on a solid framework of cultural history. Her narrative depends on grounding the characters of Bertrande de Rols, Martin Guerre, Arnaud du Tihl, and their associates within a web of social context. Davis draws heavily on the traditional Coras narrative, but also supplements the established story with the version presented in Le Sueur, a new source she discovered. Additionally, she incorporates unusual sources dealing with broader social context and infers specifics from a general study of period interactions. It is this latter approach that historian Robert Finlay disagrees with. He claims that Davis does not appropriately rely on the source material provided by the Coras narrative and thus gives an unnecessarily dramatic version of events. The AHR forum on the subject includes both Finlay’s review and Davis’s response, providing a model of scholarly debate that extends beyond the actual content of the book in question. In addition to being a rhetorical critique, Finlay is attacking the foundational methodology of modern social history that Davis is then compelled to defend.

This was influenced by the manor system, “ The manor was the economic side of feudalism” (Doc 2). This meaning that your ranking in the feudalism was your job in the manor system. If you were a serf you worked, and farmed for the King, Knights,and Nobles and you had one day a week to farm to feed yourself and your family. If that isn't hard enough they also had to pay high rents to the lords for using his land to farm. The Knights and Nobles had to fight and serve the King for exchange of land,and they had to pay taxes. This showing that life in the Middle Ages was hard for many

Two short novels “The Wife of Martin Guerre” by Janet Lewis and “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Conner have very different plots, however, many connections can be made between certain characters. A strong example of this would be Arnaud (posing as Martin), and Manley, two antagonists from each of the novels listed above, respectively. In Janet Lewis’ short novel “The Wife of Martin Guerre” the main character Bertrande is taken on an emotional roller coaster as her husband Martin doesn’t return from a trip he promised would only be a week. Just as she is learning to embrace being the head of the household and a single mother, a man claiming to be the Martin who left her eight long years ago appears out of the blue, throwing her life and emotions into complete chaos. In Flannery O’Conners short story “Good Country People” a woman named Hulga, who is unpleasant to the majority of people, is seduced by a young man, claiming to be nothing more than a simple country boy selling bibles. Later in these short stories, it is revealed that both of these men are not who they claim to be, and their lies caused rather dreadful repercussions. These two antagonists delude Hulga and Bertrande in their respective stories by enticing them with desirable amounts of knowledge and causing them to lose perception of reality by using manipulation throughout the entire plot.

The Return of Martin Guerre written by Natalie Davis gives the audience a rare glimpse into the world of peasant life in sixteenth century France. It also allows a modern day audience a chance to examine and to compare their own identities and questions of self. What makes the story so interesting to modern day viewers and readers is how relevant the story and the people in it are to our own times. This story is about a history of everyday people rather than royalty and generals, history's usual subjects.

During the Middle Ages a peasant’s life was, indeed, very rough, there were anywhere from ten to sixty families living in a single village; they lived in rough huts on dirt floors, with no chimneys, or windows. Usually one end of the hut was given over to storing livestock. Furnishings were quite sparse; three legged stools, a trestle table, beds softened with straw or leaves and placed on the floor; the peasant diet was mainly porridge, cheese, black bread, and a few homegrown vegetables. Peasants had a hard life, yet they did not work on Sundays, and they could travel to nearby fairs and markets. The basic diet of a lord consisted of meat, fish, pastries, cabbage, turnips, onions, carrots, beans, and peas, as well as fresh bread, cheese, and fruit. This is by no means equivalent to the meals the peasants ate, a lord might even feast on boar, swan, or peacock as well.

Here, this essay is mainly focused on a couple of aspects regarding the book by Emile Guillaumin: The Life of a Simple Man. The first is based on the Métayers otherwise known as sharecroppers. From what they were like,